How to Write an Email to a Client after the Meeting

If you are a B2B business, you depend on regular meetings with clients. It doesn’t matter if these are phone calls or actual face-to-face encounters, the point is that you’ve made a connection. However, it is usually not enough. You need to stay in touch with your clients, to make them remember you, your company, and your services. In our experience, the best starting point here is writing a follow-up thank-you email after the meeting.

Like meeting invitation or cancellation emails, follow-up messages are something that you should master to be better in business communication. Unfortunately, not everybody is aware of the power of follow-ups. What’s more, not everybody is good at following up. This is why we are dedicating the current article to issues, including:

How to write a follow-up message to clients

How to write an email to the client after a meeting

How to write an email to the client asking for documents

How to write a thank-you email after a meeting

Apart from the basics, we’ll also cover some typical mistakes people make when following up after a business meeting.

Your follow-up thank-you email after a meeting is a part of networking

A thank-you email after a meeting not just a nice touch, but a necessary step in building and maintaining any business relationship. Sending a personalized thank-you note for the business meeting establishes a connection with your clients.

It ensures that you and your client are on the same page after the meeting

It lets you provide a recap of the planned activities

It speeds up bringing your mutual plan to life

Send a meeting follow-up email ASAP

The first rule of follows-up: send yours as soon as possible. And better do it on the same day, while the memory is fresh, and the mind’s not been changed. Failing to write the client within the first 24 hours after your meeting might result in losing the progress you’ve made with them.

Imagine a situation: your client has several appointments with different companies on one day. The same problem is discussed. Within the next few days, some companies follow up, and some don’t. Although the solutions that you and your competitors propose might be different, the client is more likely to remember and choose those who wrote a follow-up email. So, act quickly. Send your message ASAP.

Choose a proper “follow-up email after the meeting” subject line

You’ve made up your mind to send a follow-up message shortly after the appointment: great! Now here’s your first challenge: to write a subject line for a thank-you email after the meeting. A quick tip: by your email subject, the addressee should immediately know what the letter is about.

Avoid too general subjects like “Thank you” or “A quick follow up” and try to be slightly more specific. What are you thankful for? What are you following up on? Such as:

A quick follow-up on today’s meeting

Your subject line for a follow-up email after the meeting might contain the name of the person or people with whom you met. This will make your message more personal. Like in the examples below:

Great meeting you today, {Name}

It’s been a pleasure meeting you, {Name}

If you want to get straight to business, your follow-up email subject line after meeting should be a little more official and to the point. You can try one of those:

Today’s meeting takeaways

Our yesterday’s meeting follow-up

Here are a few recommendations on {insert the discussed topic here}

Structure of a follow-up email after a business meeting

Now, what should be inside your after-meeting email? For sure, it must start with a greeting and be followed by a thank you. It is recommended to mention the topic discusses at the meeting and the main takeaways. Then, you will need to suggest further plans or steps and provide a clear call to action. Always end with a closure and your business email signature.

To recap, the structure of a meeting follow-up email looks as follows:

Greeting

A thank you

Statement of the discussed topic(s)

Main takeaways

Next steps

A call to action

Closure

Your email signature

Below we’ll take a look at writing a business meeting follow-up email in more detail. Meanwhile, it’s worth saying that it’s essential to adhere to specific rules when sending a follow-up meeting email. Adding common-ground references or suggesting the next meeting would make your follow-up email after a business meeting more personal and to-the-point. Read on to learn about some good practices for writing follow-ups.

1. Say "thank you” for the meeting

As mentioned earlier, it’s crucial to start your email with a thank you. However, be specific. What are you thanking for? You may be grateful for the client’s time, for insightful inputs, for sharing useful information about their company with you, or for the meeting itself. Be appreciative.

2. Add a common-ground reference

Write about the shared aspects that you’ve learned about during your meeting. Emphasize some positive elements of the appointment, such as a shared interest in coffee, a place you both went to school in, or a recent conference that you both attended. Write only what’s appropriate and don’t act overly familiar with the person.

3. Add a meeting recap in your email

Sometimes, your follow-up serves as a meeting recap email or a meeting summary email. There are the messages in which you summarize your meeting chronologically or logically. List your primary takeaways by answering the following questions:

4. Follow up on the promises you made at the meeting

After the meeting, you will most certainly have some homework to do. If you drafted a plan, provide the client with an approximate timeline of its execution. If you promised to answer a question or look up the best option to tackle the client’s problem, send the respective information to him or her in your follow-up.

5. Request the documents you agreed on

In case you agreed on working together, make sure you have the necessary documents before you start the work. An email after the business meeting is the best occasion to ask for the papers. Make sure you send the required documentation on your part as well.

6. Note the next date of contact

You will probably need to have another appointment with this client. It might be to update them on your progress or to discuss the further steps. Make sure you take the initiative regarding the next meeting, and it’s better to do in advance. Suggest a date for your next get-together and make certain that you both add it to the calendar.

7. Use a professional email message closing

The email closure matters as well. Be professional and avoid informal closings, such as “See you later” or “Take care.” Stay formal and end your follow-up email with a classic “Best regards” followed by your business email signature. You can see the good examples of the latter here.

Key fails when sending after meeting email

1) Sending your meeting follow-up to a wrong person

Probably the biggest mistake you can make is sending your after-meeting email to the wrong person. It will not only be odd, but you might also reveal sensitive information to a third party. So be careful with your To field. To be safe, you can find a thread with your client and respond to it with a new subject. If you’ve had a meeting with more than one person, make sure to include them all in your follow-up.

2) Making your thank-you email too long and not keeping it to the point

You don’t need to write a detailed transcript of your meeting. Just a thank you, a quick recap of the essential points, and a clear statement of the following steps with a call to action. That would suffice.

3) Not double-checking grammar

You should always pay extra attention to your grammar when communicating with clients. Spelling mistakes do sometimes cost lives. Jokes aside, they still can cost you important deals. Make sure your writing is impeccable by enabling tools like Grammarly. Also, do not rely on auto-correction.

4) Not including your additional contact information

Surely, your client must have your contact information already. But bad things happen, contacts can be lost, so you have to always include your phone number in your email signature. In case he or she has a pressing matter that needs to be discussed over the phone, they will always find that number in your latest email.

5) Waiting too long to send your thank-you email after the business meeting

Try to send the follow-up no later than 24 hours after the meeting. By waiting too long, you might risk losing your client to competitors (the worst case scenario). Even if you are sure that your relationship with the client is safe, you might just forget some essential takeaways from the meeting.

6) Writing a generic thank-you note

Don’t write a generic thank you. Always be specific and personal and do not send all your clients the same email. Even though you might use templates, customize your every single piece of correspondence. It will take some time to craft a follow-up email, but it will bring results in the end.

7) Showing your custom fields

In case you are using email templates, make sure your custom fields or merge tags are all replaced by actual information about the client. Leaving chunks of symbols like {!FirstName} is unacceptable: your follow-up will look like an impersonal bulk message. In case you are using an email-sending platform, don’t send anything without testing it first.

Customizable follow-up email templates after a meeting

Enough about the DOs and DON’Ts. Let us better give you a real follow-up meeting email sample. This is just an example of what you can write in your messages and how you can write them. You can take them and use them. Just be sure to replace our sample information with what’s relevant to you.

Here is a sample thank-you letter after meeting a prospective client:

Dear Henry,

Thank you for taking the time to meet with my colleagues from SailOnEmail and me today regarding your email marketing goals. It’s been a pleasure talking to you and learning about YourCompany.

Let me outline the main takeaways from our meeting:

Your team will enjoy a 3-month trial of our platform

We will help you set up your account and will be available to answer any of your questions

We are meeting in 2 months again to discuss your experience with the platform and to find how you can use it to even more advantage

I will write you next week to arrange our next meeting with you and your team. Meanwhile, if you have any questions, please feel free to message or call me.

I am sharing with you our 2017 report on the best practices for welcome email series.

My colleagues or I will be available to answer any questions that you might have in the process.

We agreed to meet in a few months to discuss your experience with the platform and to work on the ways for you to exceed your 2018 marketing targets.

You mentioned that you would like to have a bigger following on Facebook. What do you think about remarketing campaigns? Targeting your existing email subscribers on Facebook could help you grow a dedicated audience. If you are interested, I can tell you about this in more detail.

Meanwhile, please see the report on welcome email series attached.

Peter will be contacting Jeff tomorrow at 12 PM. He will have everything ready for the setup by then.

If you would like to try remarketing, we can arrange a quick call tomorrow between 3 PM and 5 PM or Friday between 12 PM and 3 PM. What do you think?

To sum it all up, always message your clients after a meeting, regardless of how long you’ve been working with them. Remember that, when writing a follow-up email after the meeting, subject line, thank you, meeting recap, and a call to action are your key elements to have. Make sure you don’t make mistakes, from typos to sending the email to a wrong addressee. Keep your message concise, personal, and polite.